Search for Brothers

The Harry Potter phenomenon - and make no mistake, it is a phenomenon - is unlike anything we have seen in recent history. Rather than being the result of clever marketing and hucksterism, Harry Potter's popularity began at the grass roots level. ...

Pacino meets De Niro. It has the sound of a classic screen moment. These actors - two of the best in the business for more than twenty-five years - have previously appeared in the same picture only once (The Godfather II), but, due to the split-t...

Here’s a link to my original review of Heat, published in December 1995.At the time of its 1995 release, Heat was heralded primarily as offering the first on-screen pairing of legends Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Although the two had shared t...

With Heaven and Earth, Oliver Stone has completed his so-called "Vietnam Trilogy" - three films that examine different aspects of the war that, to this point, has provided the centerpiece of Stone's filmmaking career. The story begins in the vi...

Since the death of Alfred Hitchcock, many filmmakers have vied to succeed the Master of Suspense. With apologies to rip-off artist Brian De Palma, my vote goes to David Mamet, whose films House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner can stand alongside ...

Never accuse Spike Jonze of lacking ambition. His latest cinematic endeavor, Her, could be considered "meditative science fiction" or perhaps an iRomance. Regardless of how it's designated, Her uses a familiar idea to sci-fi fans - machine sentienc...

It's safe to say that, as a director, Clint Eastwood shows no fear. Only a few years beyond telling the story of Iwo Jima from the Japanese point-of-view, Eastwood ventures down another little traveled cinematic avenue by making what is essentiall...

In 2001, only a few months after the fall of the World Trade Center, Peter Jackson swept us away to Middle Earth with The Fellowship of the Ring. It was a wondrous three-hour achievement: the first major attempt at serious, big budget epic fantasy....

In 2005, genre fans were able to celebrate the day when the entire six-film Star Wars saga was available for public consumption. Nine and one-half years later, the same can be said of Peter Jackson's Middle Earth epic. As George Lucas learned, th...

Special effects have always played an important role in Peter Jackson's adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's books but, with The Desolation of Smaug, the middle chapter of The Hobbit movie trilogy, they take center stage. This isn't necessarily a positi...